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User blog:MasterPG5/Building the Falcon Heavy in real life
=GSPACE BLOG SPECIAL= GSpace Blog #S01 =Building the Falcon Heavy in real life= At the beginning of September I was standing at home, looking at a rocket with pride. The rocket was the famous Falcon Heavy. But how have I come this far to have my own SpaceX rocket? I will tell you its story now. I have always been interested in models during my life. I have some plastic ones: a Star Wars spaceship, 2 helicopters, and 2 fighter jets. These were only so called snaptite models, which needed no glue to be assembled. Unfortunately, these models were pretty expensive for my tight budget as a kid, so I could not get many of them. However, this summer I discovered another type of modelling: papercraft. I found a website, paper-replika.com , which offered huge amounts of different models, like military vehicles, weapons, aircrafts, Iron Man suits, etc., and my favourite category: spacecrafts. For those who don’t know paper modelling, I will write a short summary. The point is the same as in case of plastic or wood modelling: to make a replica of something out of paper. (You can also create new objects, but I will focus on the replica part.) These so called papercrafts are usually small-scale duplicates, so you can build almost anything. It is also cheap: you only need some sheets of paper, a printer, a pair of scissors and/or a knife, and some glue. Other recommended equipment is a cutting mat, a needle and a pair of tweezers. I also used some toothpicks and paper tissues to help with gluing. I started collecting templates which I liked. Unfortunately, I didn’t have much free time, so I couldn’t start working right away, but in August, I finally could begin building my first papercraft: the Falcon Heavy rocket. Firstly, I had to print the templates. As this rocket is a quite small (1:300 scale) and simple model (that’s why I chose it to be the first for me), its templates consisted of only 3 sheets of A4 pages. Next, I began real work, and cut out the different parts of the rocket. I started with scissors, but soon realised, that it is much easier with a knife, especially at the smaller parts and glue tabs. After I finished cutting, I went on to assembling and gluing the rocket. I chose to go with the centre rocket first. Gluing it was not easy at all, especially at the fairing, because the parts were really small, even picking them up was hard to do, let alone gluing them together… But I succeeded at the end. Next, I did the 2 boosters, during which I could practice gluing a bit more. At the end, I assembled the launch tower with the display stand. The most difficult parts are always the small, curved parts; and also, the last part of each different rocket to be glued, because then you can’t really push the paper together, because you can’t put anything inside its body, so you have to apply more glue. To sum up, building the Falcon Heavy was not easy at all, but at the end, I can be proud of my first papercraft rocket. I am planning to build more models later. From the space topic a Saturn V rocket, the Atlantis Space Shuttle, and an astronaut figure are in my plans, but I will also build a cruise ship, some airplanes, Star Wars spaceships, etc. I hope some of you took a liking for papercraft, and if so, I can’t wait to see your constructions! Written by: MasterPG5 Here you can see some more pictures of my Falcon Heavy: FH2.jpg FH3.jpg FH4.jpg FH5.jpg FH6.jpg Category:Blog posts